Ninja (5 page)

In the end, Masakado's victory was in vain. A few months later he himself was defeated, killed by a stray arrow, and beheaded, his head being exposed in Kyoto as a warning to other rebels.

The stories of Yamato and Masakado do more than show the importance of deception. They also highlight opposing themes in Japanese history: the capital, the emperor, and unity set against the provinces, warlords, and diversity. It would take seven hundred years for that conflict to be resolved in favor of capital, emperor, and national unity. Along the way, shadow warriors would play vital roles, though largely obscured by the glitter and drama and public displays of their counterparts, the samurai.

2

HOW TO BE A SHADOW WARRIOR, PART 1: MIND AND SPIRIT

If a ninja steals for his own interests, which is against common morals, how can the gods or Buddha protect him?

Ninja instructional poem

It seems almost magical, this art of night stealth that enables you to make yourself invisible.

Foreword, the
Shoninki

THE
FIRST
TO
REVEAL
THE
SECRETS
OF
THE
NINJAS
WERE
THE
ninjas themselves, long ago.

Throughout their history, the ninjas were by definition secretive. It would have been against all their training and teaching—indeed, self-destructive—to make public their way of life. But the secrets
were
revealed, not long after Japanese unification made the ninjas an irrelevance. Why? Perhaps it was to help train recruits into the contingent of two hundred ninjas taken on by the shogun as secret police, perhaps it was simply to record a way of life that seemed about to vanish. Whatever the motive, it was done at least three times. The best of these records is the
Shoninki
(
Sho Nin Ki
, “true ninja tradition” or “Account”), probably written by Natori Masatake, a samurai in the service of the shogun, a century after the ninjas' Iga homeland was destroyed in 1581.

Probably
written by Natori Masatake. He does not name himself, but a friend who provides the foreword mentions a name that has enabled scholars to agree on an identification, even though this Natori used several names, as was common in Japanese history. There are three versions of his book in English (see bibliography). I rely on the one translated and edited by the British
ninjutsu
scholar Antony Cummins and his Japanese colleague Yoshie Minami, because it best takes into account the difficulties of dealing with seventeenth-century Japanese. What follows is a combination of indirect and direct quotes, presenting the essence of Natori's teaching.

To modern eyes, the most surprising thing about the
Shoninki
is what it leaves out. Being used to seeing ninjas on film—more on that later in the book—you might expect (a) many weapons, and (b) a list of martial arts moves. But weapons get short shrift, and there is absolutely nothing about martial arts, raising the possibility that, for all its long life,
ninjutsu
, the art of the ninja, did not focus on martial arts at all until well after the
Shoninki
was written. Its focus is primarily on attitude, or right-mindedness; deception; and charms, which is surely where the idea of ninjas as masters of magic originated, an idea rejected by Natori right at the beginning.

First, to explain the essence of
ninjutsu
, Natori writes a little dialogue between apprentice and master. The apprentice is in awe of the rumored skills of the ninja. I have vaguely heard, he says, that even if a father and a son or brothers see each other while engaged in ninja covert acts, they would not be able to recognize each other. They say a ninja can move instantly from in front of you to behind, that he appears and disappears from moment to moment. “Surely,” he concludes, “this art cannot be attained by mere human beings?”

The master is scathing. True, ninjas are masters of deception, able to talk about a province they have never been to, tell a strange story about a place they don't know, buy things with gold or silver they don't have, eat food nobody gives, get drunk without drinking alcohol. They go out acting covertly all night and sleep in the wilderness without shelter. There is nowhere they cannot go. Even so, “what have you seen or heard in order to so misunderstand this path? Nothing is mystical about the true tradition and correct way of ninjutsu.”

You must understand (says Natori) that when we speak of
ninjutsu
we are speaking of life skills. Nakashima Atsumi, who modernized the
Shoninki
's seventeenth-century Japanese for translation into English, writes in a preface that the
Shoninki
“offers instruction for every aspect of your life and provides help in any circumstance.”

But it will only provide help if you have the right attitude, namely, one that derives from the teachings of Confucius, which were back in fashion at the time Natori was writing: “A ninja can do anything as long as it is in accordance with his own sense of value and the justice of the group he belongs to.” In other words, he must serve an impersonal cause. Sometimes he will be told to undertake assassination, theft, or robbery, but even dirty jobs like this are justified if the ninja is “right-minded,” that is, if he acts for the benefit of his employer. “If ninjas used ninjutsu for their own interest, it would be mere theft and robbery,” and no one would hire them. “Right-minded,” however, is not necessarily “high-minded.” Obeying orders does not equate to morality.

So serving your master's interests rather than your own is only the most basic requirement. A ninja should aim higher than that, in accordance with the oath sworn by the warriors of the ninja heartland, the old provinces of Iga and K
o
ga, the great oath known as
Ichi Gun Ichi Mi
, (one district, one band). By doing this, it is said, they “show that their family tradition was extraordinarily exquisite and outstanding, and also show the marvel of their tradition of ninjutsu at its best.”

What does this mean? First, it means behaving in the right way. “You must always appear graceful and calm, just as waterfowl do on a calm lake.” Those who uphold the true way of the ninja “should stay on the path of perseverance, which makes them righteous, even though others around them disrespect the ways of the ninja; thus can they not be described as saints or even enlightened?”

Above all, your purpose is to survive and return home, for otherwise you cannot do your job, which is to bring back information, as Natori emphasizes. “What a
shinobi
[ninja] is meant to do is fulfill his mission without losing his life. . . . Those who can succeed on a mission are, in the end, described as good
shinobi
, even if they sometimes get behind schedule or hesitate.”

For success, it is important not to fear death, for fear disturbs the mind. In modern terms, you must live a paradox: To fear death is to court death; to accept death is (perhaps) to gain life. Serenity is all. “If you enter into a dangerous situation and if the occasion arises, you should not value your life over death. Tradition says that life exists within death and death exists within life. Therefore if your actions risk the losing of your life and you have no fear, you may find a way out of a desperate situation. However, if you try to survive, you may lose your life because you are too stressed to see the way out.

“If you hold on to your ego, you will be unsettled or upset. If you come with a serene mind, you have nothing to fear.”

Natori returns to the same theme several times, sometimes sounding like a modern self-help guru. “Do not get involved in things. If you get stuck on a problem and entangled within it, it is because you cannot let go of yourself but are preoccupied with pursuing your self-interest.” And again: Don't indulge your emotions. Develop mental strength. If you neglect to nourish your true mind properly, you will run out of energy, get tired, and end up failing. Generally, when you have inner peace, you can fathom things that other people cannot and outmaneuver their thought processes. “Nothing is as amazing as the human mind!”

In practice, subtlety is the key quality. Perhaps the wisest advice in the
Shoninki
is summarized by a chapter title: “How to Avoid Defeating Other People.” Do not defeat your enemy? But isn't that the ninja's whole purpose? No. The goal is that of the true secret agent: to learn and return. For that you must nurture your sources, not dominate. “If you psychologically defeat others, you will not be able to attain a desired result or get your needed information. If you offend them too much, they will lose their temper and get upset and become competitive, thus your aim will not be achieved.”

So in conversation, be flexible. Those who are too inflexible will be hard when they should be soft, strong when they should be yielding.

Such skills demand great sensitivity, empathy as we would call it today. You should “identify with your enemy, which means you should guess with your own mind what he is thinking.” As all things in the universe are common to us all, you can use what is in your mind to second-guess your enemy. “If you can achieve this desired result, it could be said you have attained the skill of ‘the taking of the enemy's mind.' How clever it is and what a godlike skill to have!”

3

ANTI-NINJA: THE SAMURAI

The way a good ninja works is: to know about people without letting them know about him.

Ninja instructional poem

ALMOST
FROM
THE
BEGINNING
OF
JAPAN
'
S
MILITARY
TRADITION
, all things covert were deeply unfashionable, the agenda in military matters being set by the proud, prickly, and extremely overt samurai. Yet, of course, spies and commando-style fighters were necessary. Indeed, sometimes samurai also acted as ninjas;
most
ninjas were samurai,
some
samurai were ninjas. To understand why ninjas were necessary, and why they remained hidden, you have to understand the very outward and visible ways of the samurai, which hardened over time as real events and warriors were transformed by tales into an ideology.

The samurai, of course, considered themselves the only true warriors, inheritors of a tradition that stretched back to the ninth century. It started with bows and arrows shot from horseback, from which evolved a complex set of highly public rituals. Opposing sides would line up and fire whistling arrows to call upon the gods as witnesses. Then top warriors, boxed into their leather-and-iron armor, would call out challenges to single combat, each boasting of his achievements, virtues, and pedigree. They would then discharge arrows at one another, either galloping past or at a distance—not a great distance, though, because Japanese bows were much weaker than those used by mainland warriors, such as the Huns, Mongols, and Turks, and their horses, too, far less sturdy than central Asian breeds. If there was no winner, a rather unseemly grapple occurred, with each trying to unseat the other, followed by a final bout with daggers. Since both warriors were totally enclosed in armor, the rounds of horseback archery were usually more show than substance, designed to give the individual warrior a chance to display his skills and cover himself in glory, whether he lived or died. Display was the essential element, for the warriors were, in the words of historian Karl Friday, “like modern professional basketball players, more apt to think of themselves as highly talented individuals playing for a team, than as the component parts
of
a team.”
¹
The best way to showcase their skills was in battle.

In the late twelfth century, two clans, the Taira, who had ruled Japan for two hundred years, and the upstart Minamoto, vied for dominance, each seeking to sideline the cloistered emperor. After a five-year war, the Taira were swept to oblivion by the Minamoto, under their great general, Minamoto no Yoshitsune, the greatest of Japan's popular heroes, indeed (in the words of one scholar) “probably the single most famous man in all of pre-modern Japanese history.” Much is legend, but much is accepted as truth, both historical and personal. Cocksure, blunt, and impetuous, he had all the traits that came to define the medieval samurai.

Moreover, Yoshitsune lived at a turning point in Japanese history, when the ancient regime—whose super-refined ways are detailed in Japan's first novel,
The Tale of Genji
—had proved hopeless at imposing the sort of tough rule that Japan needed to hold it together, whether as a nation or as a collection of independent provinces sharing the same culture. The only way life worked, it seemed, was by using force to impose what would come to be called feudalism: a peasantry kept in line by a warrior caste that was absolutely loyal to its masters and to its emperor. It was as a general in the forefront of change that Yoshitsune made an enduring name.

There is also a deeply human story here. Yoshitsune was fighting on behalf of his elder half-brother, Yoritomo. After Yoshitsune's victorious campaign in the so-called Gempei War (1180–85), the jealous Yoritomo condemned him, drove him into exile, and then hunted him down, until in despair Yoshitsune committed suicide by slicing open his belly. Yoshitsune quickly became the subject of admiring legends, carried around Japan by blind storytellers. Collected (and translated), they form vivid sources, full of passion, incident, and character. He is still with us, in novels, manga, and kabuki and noh plays, as “the perfect example of heroic failure,” in the words of Ivan Morris. “If he had not actually existed, the Japanese might have been obliged to invent him.” In 2005, there was a forty-nine-part TV series devoted to him.